Web Pages and My Personal Opinion of Them
by Yuma Morita
The phrase "point and click" is all too familiar to the basic computer user these days. With their computers, people now have the power to do see and do a plethora of things with this phrase. Thanks to the invasion of cyberspace, even more possibilities exist to the everyday computer user. The Internet is an almost infinite resource for providing great reference information, entertainment, and other everyday needs. Obviously, people have their preferences of which pages they find the best or most useful. It is also quite clear that different pages have different purposes and therefore are displayed quite differently. For the expert computer user, time seems to play a factor in a good web page in terms of a simple yet informative page. Others prefer stunning visual or even audio effects to receive information. Web pages come in all styles and forms and exist for different purposes. Their appeal is completely personal to the viewer.
First off, I would like to talk about informational pages. These pages exist for the sole purpose of enabling people to find out about a certain subject. For example, I had to write a research paper on atheism. As I put the word "atheism" through the Lycos search engine, many great pages came up. A very popular thing that web sites have are FAQ's. FAQ's stands for frequently asked questions. Of course, these questions come with answers that are either very blunt and simple, or complex and detailed. I find that most FAQ's give me more than enough information to satisfy my needs. Informational pages tend to not have fancy backgrounds and options such as Quicktime movies, JPEGs, or sound applications. These are a waste of memory and for the most part are not helpful to people who need fast and quotable information. However, people who have the time and interest to utilize these options can benefit from them. For certain subjects like music, sounds are obviously a good thing to have on a page. Links to other related pages are great if you need more than one source to research a certain subject. However, I do not like pages that have thousands and thousands of links. It is overwhelming to find that many links. The web maker should provide around ten good links. After all, the pages that are linked also have many links to them as well. This chain just goes on and on. Having fewer links also saves downloading time for fast web browsers like me who have short attention spans. Also, the links should also include a brief summary of the link and what the web maker likes about it. Informational pages should be clear and concise, without going on and on. Vocabulary should be easy and sentence or phrase structure is best when short and sweet. An example of a great informational page would be one of the pages I used for my paper on atheism. It is called the Alt. Atheism FAQ's. This page has many great sections of information that is all summarized. I probably would have had to read a huge text to receive the same information. There are no movies, sounds, or effects, but it had the information that I needed.
People don't always use the Internet for research. Many people like to surf the web out of interest or even obsession. I for instance, like to visit entertainment pages. These pages are for subjects such as music, movies, sports, etc. My favorite pages such as Star Wars or UFO pages are best with many options such as movie clips, sounds and pictures. The Vader Home Page is great for all interests in the Star Wars Trilogy. It provides pictures, and links to many places that relate to Star Wars, such as video games, movie scripts, rumors of new movies, and other such things. I love to collect and file the most interesting things I can find from entertainment pages, such as unknown artists' drawings and pictures of rare posters. Also, text in such pages should be simple and short, just like informational pages. This does not include creative pieces of poetry or other short stories. These types of literature should be as articulate as the writer wants. Places like Digital Cinema and the Movie Sounds Page are great for finding audio and/or video clips of favorite movies. They are organized easily by alphabetical order. It is important to also list the size of the movie or sound clip being downloaded. I hate it when I want a particular clip, such as a scene from the movie "Things to do in Denver When You're Dead," and I find out it is 18 megabytes and will take a half hour to download. Time is always such an important factor for a fast surfer. Pages are great when they have big bold letters and a cool pictorial background, such as the MTV Homepage. This page has a neat image map for a background of black with "MTV" written in white on the top of it.
Other company pages such as the MTV page are very interesting as well. They can have many fun activities in the pages like interactive games and programs. Also, pages like the Comedy Central Homepage has a "real time" option where you can see what is on TV at the exact moment that you click on your mouse. Also, pages which flash and have animated type visual effects, such as JAVA scripting, grab my attention very nicely. Pages of musical groups and bands enable fans to hear sound clips of unreleased or rare songs and interviews of the performers. Also, gossip about upcoming albums and historical anecdotes about the band are fun to read. Great band pages are available for almost any band, including Pearl Jam, my favorite band . Concert photographs and album cover art are both fun to save and put in as desktop patterns. Musical guitar tablature is a bonus to have on a web page for a band. My most frequently visited page is OLGA, or the On-Line Guitar Archive. This kind of page is a cross between informational a page and a recreational page. It simply lists letter A-Z in alphabetical order by the band or performer's name. I just clicks on the letter I want. Then I find the artist and song in the same manner. It has no fancy background or other applications. However, it is simple and very useful. I can learn how to play any song on the guitar with such a resource.
The future of the Internet will be incredibly technologically advanced in the coming years. Soon, everyday life will revolve around the screen at which I typed this paper. People will be able to almost literally travel around the world and escape to new worlds. Time and money are the most important factors about the production of web pages. Education and entertainment will become much more visual and audio enhanced. Web makers today should keep this in mind in designing pages today. The way a page is designed shows the personality of the person who created the page. Ultimately, different pages have different uses and times of need. The best example would be to compare pages to stores. I would not go to a shoe store if I wanted a CD. In dealing with cyberspace, I would not go to an informational page to be entertained. Pages are personal, as are peoples' tastes in them.
Return to the Essay Page
You should also check Yuma's Personal Page!